Robin Cain | + Follow Poet |
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Bonfire Night

It were bonfire night in 1910,
when fireworks first lit the night,
streets that were dark in shadows,
now suddenly fulsome and bright.

Bairns scattered as the bangs blew o’er us,
we giggled and ran for our lives,
and clutched as the noises grew louder,
at the skirt’s of our father’s wives.

I were twelve when I held onto my mother
scared by the lights in the sky,
mother said, ‘don’t be frit son,
it’s just fireworks, flying up high.’

I remembered that night six years later,
as I lay in the shadows, all dark,
as a flare lit up the Somme wasteland,
to aid bullets in finding their mark.

Entangled in wire, some were screaming,
others, quietly accepting their fate.
All knew, as they lay in the quagmire,
that morning for them, was too late.

I heard some call out for their mothers,
while others called out for their wife.
All called out for God, who’d deserted,
he’d gone, and he’d taken their life.

In the twenties when war it had ended,
I could never tell what I’d seen.
To explain to a child, 
how men could go wild, would be
brutal, vile and obscene.

So I locked all these thoughts in a chamber,
and buried them deep in my mind.
Locked them so deep, it was only in sleep,
fired the torment to which I’m consigned.

I’d remember the noises while dreaming,
the shells and the light in the sky,
exposing my friends, who were screaming,
and begging to live, not to die.

I were judged for being erratic,
bad tempered, a worrisome bloke.
All because I picked up a rifle,
to protect all us ord’nary folk.

I won’t ever talk about battles,
or those that were lost or were maimed,
yet I’ll always remember those brothers,
when bonfire night comes round again.

Copyright © Robin Cain | Year Posted 2017

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